<Begin Segment 22>

FA: Before you left New York City, you took on the newspapers for the use of their word "Jap." Why did you do that and how did you do that?

SS: Well, after I had been with Standard and Poor's, about two or three months after I joined Standard and Poor's, the idea of becoming a union member to me wasn't appealing at first. And I complained about that to the personnel officer and he said, "Well I can understand how you feel, but on the other hand, having a union here has benefited our employees. They've gotten better pay." So anyway, later on, Standard and Poor's... I was going to go, I had made up my mind I would go to accept that job in Denver and I'd been... I had a lady friend for several years there and she was, she had cancer. She had cancer seven years earlier and seven years had passed since that first outbreak of cancer was declared either cured or was stopped and so I got her to... I was hoping that after seven years and very often in cancer if it's been dead for that long, they consider it cured. And I said well, I told her that I was, I wanted her to go with me when I went to Denver. I wanted her to marry me and come with me to Denver. And the, this girl...

FA: What was her name, Shosuke?

FA: Huh?

FA: What was her name?

SS: Oh, the girl who married me, her name was Yori, her first name was Yori. She had been widowed once. Her husband had died of tuberculosis. She, we became good friends and one of the nicest things was she spoke Japanese quite well and she could get along well with my mother. So I told her about my job offer from Denver and that I didn't want to go there alone. I just didn't want to see her behind and me in Denver if her ailment ever came back. I wanted to be there so I could at least go see her once a day. So I begged her to marry me and join me in Denver, or go with me. And she talked it over with her sisters and she finally made up her mind and accepted. And the day we were married, this girl... God, I can't remember her name. Anyway...

FA: Well, Yori accepted your proposal.

FA: Huh?

FA: Yori accepted your proposal.

SS: Well, she did. She finally did. She finally accepted. Her sisters and others had suggested or told her that she should accept my proposal and she agreed. The day we were married, we had a wedding dinner and the person who came to that dinner was this girl... geez, my mind is not working right.

FA: Well, her name doesn't matter.

SS: Anyway, she's with us here today. She's, she had been born only a few days before and her mother and father and had brought her and he had accepted a new job, an engineering job in Schenectady or somewhere like that, and anyway, this, the baby that had just been born a few days earlier, she's now fully grown and married, and damn, her name was...

FA: [Addressing another person in the room] Is that your mother?

SS: Wait a minute. Your...

FA: This is Laura Akagi.

SS: Wait a minute.

Female Voice: I don't think my parents were at your wedding.

FA: Well, Shosuke.

SS: Well anyway, this baby is living here in New York, she got married about half a year or a year ago, something like that.

FA: So Shosuke, you and your wife were married in New York and you moved to Denver.

SS: That's right.

FA: How many years did you spend in Denver?

SS: Three days short of one year. Her cancer came back. She was... she came from a big family. She spoke Japanese well, got along very well with my mother, which was important, and she was, I look back on her as a saint. She was. She never spoke ill of anyone. She was always kind to people she could help. I have never known anyone as kind as she was and as well-liked as she was. So, I regard the almost one year as a great privilege and a gift from God. If when I die and she's still available, I'd marry her again, any day. But, that's about all I can say.

FA: Where did you go after Denver? From Denver, where did you go?

SS: From Denver, Yori died while I was in Denver. And then I lived, I lived in Denver for a total of four or five years altogether.

FA: What caused you to leave?

SS: Huh?

FA: Why did you leave?

SS: I got so lonely.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.